The Memory of a Smile
by V.Evergreen
Summary: It's the waiting that's the worst. Waiting and wondering if your own son even had a grave.


He's getting old now.

It creeps up on him and he almost doesn't notice until one day when he shuffles down to the bathroom in the morning, he catches sight of himself in the mirror.

His eyes are bleary and unfocussed but what's even more noticeable are the lines around them. He had never had a problem with gaining a few wrinkles over the years, they showed you'd lived, that you'd been out and done something. Rory used to give him a disbelieving look and call them wrinkles while he would insist on calling them laughter lines.

He calls them wrinkles now. There hasn't been any laughter in a great many years.

As he continues to look at his own reflection, morbidly fascinated by what he sees there, he catalogues the sagging skin, tuft of resilient hair clinging to the top of his head and washed out eyes, almost methodically.

He reasons that it should bother him more than it does but it doesn't for the simple reason that it's not only his reflection that's changed.

His bones ache. His breath comes short. His hands tremble and shake and his mind drifts at the oddest of moments. All apart of growing old he supposes.

He'll never know if his son had a chance to grow old.

It haunts him everyday and he suspects that it always will.

~o~o~o~

He remembers the day clearly when he knew that his remaining family was lost to him forever. He can even remember what he was thinking when he found out. He was putting the bins out and wondering what to have for tea when he heard that tell tale sign. It had only been a week since he had last seen Amy and Rory and he bitterly remembers feeling lucky that he should see them again so soon.

He had run back into the house, to the noise of the ancient engines landing in his living room and waited for the door to be flung open to reveal three magnificent people and their tales of mystery and adventure.

All he got was one broken old man who stumbled out of the TARDIS leaving nothing but the ashes and dust of what was in his wake. There were no people behind him. Only memories.

"Brian-" He had croaked out, his voice sounding painfully thick.

Brian felt the smile slide off his face and he looked at the pitiful traveller in front of him. He backed away slowly, keeping his eyes locked on the Doctor. When he was out of the room he closed the door and very calmly walked upstairs. He didn't go back down until he heard those engines again.

Then he broke.

~o~o~o~

There are so many things he would have done differently as he looks back as a lonely old man.

He would have made the Doctor tell him exactly what happened. Made him relive every detail just so he could have known what happened to them and watch as the impossible alien realises what he did to them.

He would have begged them not to go. He would have begged the Doctor not to take them. He would have begged.

He would have gone with them. To keep them safe.

~o~o~o~

It's the thirtieth anniversary of when he last saw them and he spends it alone as he spends most of his days.

Most of Amy and Rory's friends had been used to them going missing for strange intervals on what they claimed were "holidays" but as the days melted into weeks that grouped into months even they begin to worry.

There was a police investigation.

A public appeal for help.

A memorial service.

Some of these friends kept an eye on Brian just as some of his own friends did. They tried to soften the grief in any way they knew how but at the end of the day when he wound up alone once more it made no difference.

In the end they stopped trying. Brian was left to wallow just as he wanted to while his friends watched on.

It wasn't something that they would understand, he reasoned. After all, it wasn't just the loss that still took his breath away all these years later, it was the guilt. The Doctor had looked him dead in the eye and told him that sometimes his companions die and Brian had just _let_ him take them. He trusted the young man with the quick smile, easy laugh and the shadowed eyes to keep his family safe. He was wrong to have done so.

He didn't have much family in the first place. His wife had died when Rory was only twenty one and he had no immediate family to speak of. It had always been just him and Rory.

That was until Amy. He loved that girl like she was his own. With a quick wit and an even quicker temper he was impressed that Rory managed to find her and thrilled when he managed to keep her.

Now that was just another gaping hole in his life. He still managed to talk to her parents sometimes, they had fared better than he, though not by much. What they had all lost was irreplaceable.

~o~o~o~

He knows that his life is drawing to an end when he finds the old and forgotten recording. He sits down to watch it and nearly smiles when he sees what it is. He remembers the year of the slow invasion well and he can recall making some sort of log about it if he pushes his memory far enough.

When he presses the play button his own face, much younger and infinitely happier swims into view through his misty eyes.

"Day one, Brian's log-"

"Dad…you can't call it that." Suddenly the only thing Brian can see is his son on this old video. He looks young, healthy and exasperated by his father's antics. He would give absolutely everything and anything to see that familiar light hearted annoyance in his only child's face.

Instead he just replays the clip and pays attention to the details.

Rory's holding a mug of freshly made tea. He can tell by the way the steam rises from the mug.

He'd cut himself shaving that morning. Brian was willing to bet that he, himself hadn't noticed then, but through the small screen on the outdated camera he could see the nick on his skin.

He looked happy. Brian wished he'd appreciated that at the time.

As the evening wears on he knows he could watch the rest of the tape. He remembers how long he kept that diary for and just how much footage there must be.

But he doesn't.

Instead he watches that five second clip over and over again until the screen flickers and dies from low battery. By the end of the evening his head is filled with his son's voice, even if it is only six words.

~o~o~o~

As Brian lays in the glaringly white hospital room on an uncomfortable mattress he knows this is the end. He's known it for a while now.

His mind floats and drifts, ebbs and flows, never staying still quite long enough for him to remember why he's here. He's had a long life, he wouldn't go as far to say a good life because of the last forty years he's had to endure, but it had definitely been long. He lived through it all, second by painful second and minute by torturous minute.

As he feels his mind and body finally begin to slip away from him he opens his eyes for the last time. There's no one there. He hadn't really expect there to be, the nurses (his son was a nurse, he can still remember the pride he felt then as if it had happened yesterday) will find him in the end.

In the end he knew he'd die alone.

He wonder's whether anyone will visit his grave.

He wonders if his son even had a grave.

…

A/N- Hope I didn't depress you too much! I just felt so awful for Brian when I realised he would never see his son again. I hope you liked it or at least enjoyed reading it and if you did or, in fact, didn't, please leave a review!

VE


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